A winter of discontent

Jonathan Trott: the sort who'd ask Luck home but send her off without a cup of tea
© AFP



England have one final chance to rescue some dignity from their unexpectedly disastrous Test winter. More specifically, England's batsmen have one final opportunity to issue an official, long-overdue and suitably grovelling apology to England's bowlers, in the form of a last-ditch outbreak of subcontinental competence. If any of England's willow-wielders does manage to add to Trott's solitary 2011-12 century, I hope he has the decency to hold up his bat to the bowlers in the Colombo pavilion to reveal an "I am so, so sorry" sticker plastered on the back, before flagellating himself in penance with a section of the boundary rope the England have found so elusive of late.

Seldom have two parts of the same cricket team performed at such extremes of proficiency. England's bowling has been almost uniformly excellent. The batting has been historically poor. It has been a little reminiscent of the ill-fated mixed-doubles tennis partnership between Martina Navratilova and Henry Kissinger, or the RSC's controversial 1960s production of Romeo and Juliet in which Hollywood heart-throb Paul Newman was cast opposite Chi Chi, the London Zoo panda. The difference is that Kissinger was never a truly world-class tennis player, and Chi Chi was more suited to comedic cameos than leading lady roles. Whereas England's batting, just a few months ago, was smashing records as if they were plates at the wedding of two Greek discus throwers.

England's bowlers enter their final Test of the 2011-12 season with a collective average of 26 this winter. Thus far, it has statistically been England's second best bowling winter since 1978-79, when Mrs Thatcher was still a slightly unsettling twinkle in the British electorate's eye, and Botham, Willis, Miller and others took advantage of a Packer-stripped Australia.

Since then, only in the 1996-97 season have England's bowlers returned a (fractionally) better average, and then their opponents were Zimbabwe and New Zealand, the two lowest-ranked Test nations at the time. Even in the 2000-01 winter, when England achieved outstanding series victories in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka, they averaged 33 with the ball.

For years, England had struggled to dismiss their opponents away from home, but they have now bowled their opposition out in both innings in nine of their last 11 away Tests. They had done so just five times in their previous 27 Tests outside England, dating back to their post-2005-Ashes comedown series in Pakistan, and in just 29% of their overseas Tests over the previous three decades.

England's bowlers (who in Galle became just the third attack in Test history to be on the losing side despite dismissing the opposition's top three for a total of less than 20 in both innings) have done their job all winter, a message conveyed unmistakeably by Jimmy Anderson's face when he trudged out to bat at 157 for 8, three hours after flogging a five-for out of the docile Galle surface.

England paid dearly for Monty's drops and Broad's no-ball (and, of course, for Jayawardene's refound mastery and Herath's crafty insistence), but the game was decided in their first innings, when they lost their top six wickets for less than 100 for the fifth time in four Tests this winter. They had been six down for under 100 just nine times in their previous 70 away Tests.